When I’m not working (or supposed to be working that is), I spend a fair chunk of my time surfing around in cyberspace. Not looking for anything in particular you know, just spending (alright wasting) time. On this occasion I ended up reading an article from down under and it got me thinking, which is always a worrying thing to happen.

This is the point where I normally write something along the lines of “the article in question is here” and provide a link. Not going to do that as I really do not want to give the website any more traffic. Besides, the article itself is the main reason for this post.

This is how it starts. I’m pretty sure you can guess what this is going to be about, just from that one image. You might be wondering why I’m going to be talking about smoking on a blog that is (mostly) about vaping. To be honest, my personal thoughts on the whole e-cig vs tobacco control debate has its roots buried deep in the anti-smoking campaigns. You see, there was a paper published by none other than Simon Chapman and it was all about how to completely demoralize smokers into quitting. Make them feel second class. Brilliant one Chappers, you completely turned ordinary civil human beings against each other, I’d give you a prize but I value my life.

There has been, and continues to be a very hateful campaign against smokers the result of which is the general public are now so well-trained at being smug anti-smokers that they can’t actually be nice to anyone.

So this person doesn’t like people smoking, fine I can understand that there are many that don’t and not all of them are as militant as this particular person. But, if you are going to go to a restaurant or other venue where smokers are likely to be, don’t get all hoity-toity when smoke gets in your face. You chose to be there in reach of smokers.

As always when someone this militant goes on the rampage, the subject of second hand smoke comes up without fail. Whilst SHS is classified as dangerous by the various groups, there has been a lot of discussions regarding exactly how dangerous. Something that no two groups can actually agree on.

Instead of saying that they would like to see folk stop smoking they insist on curtailing the rights of the individual that chooses to smoke. So as a smoker, you can look forward to having all sorts of social liberties significantly curtailed. You already have to go outside and disappear around a dark smelly corner to spark up, now you can look forward to all kinds of other limitations. Bravo tobacco control! You’ve successfully turned a human being that has feelings into an outcast. Do you have any idea how that makes those people feel? No I guess you don’t do you. Instead you lavish praise on those that actually cast the nasty aspersions on others in an effort to convince yourself that you are doing something to help people.

Makes for a pleasant read doesn’t it. Trouble is, the author of this article isn’t alone. There are thousands of people who think exactly like that. They treat smokers, and now vapers as something to be abhorred.

Lucky for the smokers, those in power aren’t really willing to enforce all the rubbish or we’d likely see civil unrest pretty quickly. Human beings don’t like being ostracised folks. Push one time too many, and like as not they’ll push back twice as hard.

These kinds of comments crop up regularly, on any article related to either e-cigs or smoking. There’s literally thousands of them ranging from mere sarcasm as the delightful DWHM person above, to outright threatening behaviour. I’ve deliberately made the image small as some of the comments are truly disturbing.

Well done tobacco control on your efforts to make smokers thoroughly despised. You’ve had some unintended ‘casualties’ of that approach, us vapers. Many of us endured that kind of commentary for decades. Now that we’ve taken it upon ourselves to put it right, we are still a target.

Let’s have a little perspective on this shall we?

You keep banging your war drums folks. Hell hath no fury like a vaper scorned.